God's people and Good people

Yesterday was a great day in my life! I had a big problem to sort out; but it was great opportunity to learn something directly from God.
The church I pastor had been worshiping in a hotel room for the last three years. After a wonderful service last Sunday, as I walked out of the "church”, the manager of the hotel called me aside to say that we have to move out. That means I will have to find a new place for next Sunday.
So, I started the hunt for places. Called up real-estate agents, sent text-messages to church members to pray and called leaders together to pray.
I started with a Parsi lady who runs a small nursery school from her mother’s cottage. Though she gave me an appointment at 5:00 pm I could not keep it since I was with a property dealer who was showing me places around. She waited for me till 6.00pm and got on with her other evening engagements. However, when I called her up again to reschedule my appointment, she was extremely kind to discuss the matter over the phone. She even called her mom on phone to persuade her to rent the place for us for Sunday mornings but failed. Her aged Mom (about 80 years) cannot have a group of people singing songs on Sunday morning till 1.00 pm; Sunday is her only quiet day. All the other days they have the small kids screaming and running all over the place. I understand. However, this wonderful lady, who is not a Christian but a Parsi was so concerned when I told her I have no place for church next Sunday. She thought for a moment and offered me her cottage! She added that it will be free of cost until I find a new place! She don’t want the church to be without a place to meet even for a Sunday. A Parsi, offering her cottage free of cost for Christian worship? Yes, there are lots of good people who fear the Lord outside the church. That was a new discovery.
My next stop was back to the hotel manager to plead again. I need it for another four-five weeks which will give me some time to find a new place and prepare the flock for a move. So, I walked in to the hotel. The staff who noticed me stood up respectfully, offered me a seat. The managers walked in and offered tea. I was not in a mood for tea. But one of them insisted, "You should have something!” So, I surrendered my lack of appetite before his kind hospitality. I told him why I need it for another four-five weeks. He listened carefully. They have done some Vastu and Reiki investigations on the building and found out that the place badly need renovation. They need to get it done before the IPL season begins in the first week of April, it is already March. The architect is going to pull down the fixtures and start the work next Saturday in order to meet his deadlines. But one of the managers added, "but we need the positive power of your prayers too for our business. We don’t want you to go away, we need your prayers in this building.”
So, he need to make sure the "positive powers" of my church’s prayer every Sunday in his building. So, discussion proceeded along those lines. So, we need to work out how that happens and they came up with a plan. In case the architect pulls down the hall in these four weeks time, they will get the basement ready for our service. If that is the case, then the "positive power" of my church’s prayers will go up and bless the building. Sure, we will have the building for service. I dont’ believe in the "positive power" of prayers, I don’t believe in Reiki and Vastu. All these are non-sense to me! However, I like the people who think that Christian prayers can do them some good and would like to keep some praying Christians around them! So, yesterday God worked for us and sorted out part of our problem. Yes, there are lot of people who are vulnerable to God outside the Church.
This is the lesson that Jonah had to learn in the hard way. For Jonah people of Nineveh are the most wicked ones. They should perish. In fact the whole world, the pagans who don’t know the true God should perish, that’s what Jonah believed. So, he ran away from an assignment to preach in Nineveh. He didn’t want them to repent and be saved.
So, he got in to a ship that was to sail in the opposite direction. But God won’t let him go and followed him in the sea too. The severe storm threatens the ship. The sailors threw their wares out in to the sea to make it light in an attempt to save their ship and their lives. Now, through casting lots, they found out that all these are because of one man—a disobedient prophet on board. Jonah was cool when he suggested that he be thrown overboard to the Mediterranean sea where hungry sharks roam. However, the sailors won’t. The pagan sailors has such a respect for human life, they would like to keep an Israelite though he may be the cause of all their woes. He had already told them that he worships the Lord who made heaven and earth. So, they have such great fear of this God whom they don’t know but who, according to this passenger is in charge of the sea! He had to insist and they had no other choice than get rid of this dangerous cargo which has come to them in the form of the disobedient prophet. Finally, they prayed, asked God’s forgiveness before tossing this man in to the sea! Pagans who fear the Lord and who are integral part of God’s plan, that’s a new lesson.
Now, the big fish with Jonah in his belly is speeding in the opposite direction of the ship towards Nineveh. It has an urgent commission. It has a precious cargo in its belly. It has to throw up this rebel prophet on the shores of the city of Nineveh before the digestive fluids dissolve him in his belly! He has to be in one piece! The fish cannot be as disobedient as the man of God is.
Now, in Nineveh, Noah preached his half-hearted sermon, in a "here it is, take it if you want” attitude. But the response to the one-line sermon was great! The pagans walked up to the altar in large numbers even before he gave the altar call. In fact, he was not planning one. Jonah could not believe his eyes! Even before he started playing "Just as I am without one plea, O lamb of God I come!”, there is a long queue, Usually he had to play it twice and repeat the altar call two or three times, keep telling people that all should have their eyes closed, use all sorts of gimmicks for the first person to get up and walk toward the altar. Then there will be a trickle of three to five people who line up before the pulpit. Now, here comes the entire city of Nineveh in tears beating their chests in repentance; men, women, youth, children, babies in their mothers hands, pets and even cattle following them to fast and ask God’s forgiveness. Jonah is stunned! This sort of things hasn’t happened in his crusades in Joppa or even in Jerusalem, in God’s own land! This pagan city is responding in a way that he never expected.
Oh, yes there are lots of people outside the Church who are vulnerable to God. I am reminded of what Woody Allen said, "more and more people are leaving the Church and getting closer to God!”

Making Christiana Talk

She must be in her high teens or touching the twenties. A cute, lean,
blonde she is. However, her face was without expressions, she seldom
smiled and hardly talked. Her movements were robot-like.
She stood behind the restaurant counter painted in black. The dominant
theme of the restaurant was black. Black counter, black table-cloths,
the pillars which held the glass panels giving us a view of outside
were also painted black. She, like all the other waiters wore long
black trousers, black shirts with long-sleeves. All that was visible
from that black drape was her white expression-like face, dead tired
eyes and her short blonde hair.
In short, she and her team in that blackish restaurant intensified its
melancholic air. My team ate three meals there for five days. We were
there in that country which was part of former USSR. Tired after long
meeting, we wallked in to the restaurant to be refreshed, but the
melancholic air of the restaurant made us more tired and sick even
though the food was really good.
My friend is fun-loving and he loves to talk, and enjoys jokes. This
is not the kind of surroundings that he like to be in. One day, when
he cannot stand the waiters who seldom greeted the guests, but was
duty bound, just placed the three courses one after other and cleared
them without a smile, he decided to pull out one of his tricks.
"Hi, Elvina!" he said as she was clearing the table. "Can I have a
glass of water?" She raised her head and looked at him and knew he was
adressing her. He repeated, "Elvina, I would like to have some water."
"I am not Elvina!" she retorted; but she was not angry! "Then who are
you?", my friend insisted to know. She smiled and said in a rather
subdued tone, "I am Christiana!" "Oh, sorry Christiana! What do you do
besides working here, are you a student?" Christiana smiled again and
told us that she is a student, working towards a job in hotel
management. Then whenever, we walked in to the restaurant she smiled
at us from behind the counter painted black, and whenever he laid the
food on the black table-cloths she wished us. My friend has made
Christiana smile and talk!
Christiana is representative of a generation of young people whose
parents never taught them to smile though they were free to. Their
parents and grandparents have been through repressive communist
regimes that not only rationed out food and comforts but controlled
their intellectual and emotional life.
In the streets, people don't care to make eye-contact with others. The
cashiers at the super-market counters don't greet the customers. The
bus-driver looks away from the passenger as they enter the bus. The
people of this country are still under the spell of the repressive
regime though they are free.
There is religious freedom in almost all countries that belonged to
the Eastern block; Freedom to propogate and to practice ones faith.
However, having lived their lives for three generations without
religion the natural hunger for God that every human being has seems
to have died out. The new generation generally doesn't care. Their
parents did not go to churches or Sunday Schools and they do not know
why these are essential for their children. If they could manage their
without these then their children should also.
We have been hearing a lot about religious freedom in the former
communist countries ever since Berlin wall fell. However, as I walked
through the doors, what I found is freedom but a freedom nobody like
to make use of and is not excited about.
It is not only in former USSR or but people who had gone through
similar repressive regimes also feel the same way. I remember praying
with a colleague from Combodia some years back. He said, though the
country is now free, the people are still under the spell of the Pol
Pot regime.
The Christian challenge in these countries to proclaim that there is
freedom; to make them realize that they are now free to smile, talk.
To lead them to a greater joy that is in Christ means that they should
first discover the need to be joyful. My prayer for the younger
generation would be that their eyes will be open to realize the need
to be joyful and later discover that the real joy comes from the Lord.

A Day in the Graveyard

The Indian Christian Cemetery in Pune is "alive” these days, especially the left side of the cemetery that is Catholic. Pune has two big cemeteries on the Solapur Road. The one of the left side is the European Cemetery. That is where the European Christians who lived in Pune during the colonial times are buried. After Independence, Indians who go to some of the mainline churches of European heritage are buried there. As the number of these churches are dwindling, the cemetery is also less frequented. A visit to these churches on Sundays and may make you think that there are more members in the cemetery than in the pews now. The growing younger churches manage the cemetery on the right side of the Solapur highway. That was designated for the Indian Christian population in colonial times and thus got its name as "Indian Christian Cemetery." That is divided as the Catholic and the non-Catholic cemeteries by the unpaved pathway in the middle. If you are Catholic turn left and if you are Protestant turn right!

As you enter workers are waiting for you. "Are you here for cleaning up?” They inquire! They have shovels, and knives. Some boys are ready with paint-buckets and brushes. They will help you clean up the tombs of your dear ones, weed around it and also give it a coat of paint. These workers and those who are visiting the grave of their dear-ones are all over the place. The family members are giving the graves of their dear ones a face-lift well ahead of the All Saints Day that is approaching.

On the left side of the pathway a few steps after the chapel I noticed a little grave. By the size of it I guessed that a very young life is buried there. Judging by the age of the flower plant at the head of the grave, it is not new. It is not built up, no marble, no tombstone--just a heap of mud. It has a metal cross at the head and a few bricks around it. A lady in her late forties has cleaned it up and is giving it a coat of cow-dung. Cow dung is sacred and it is used for polishing the mud-floors in villages. A ten-year-old boy is very keenly watching the skillful movements of his mother’s hand on the smooth cow-dung paste. Another lady, is applying white lime-paste on the bricks around the small grave.

I approached her to find out who is sleeping under that small heap of mud, so passionately attended to. The lady applying the cow-dung was so absorbed in her work and did not bother to answer my question. But the lady with the brush and the lime bucket raised her head to look at me. She said, "It is her sister”, pointing towards the lady with the cow-dung polish. "How did she die?” I wanted to know. She said he doesn’t know the cause of her death. She was also not sure of her exact age at death as well. But only one thing she knows that it was forty years ago that she lost her little sister "Yesther” (Mararthi for Esther). She has kept that grave, protected it all these forty-some years. Now her ten year old son accompanies her to his aunt’s grave. She is celebrating her loss, her brother’s wife who came to her life much later has joined in her grief and in her labor of love! I could sense there a bond that is not broken even after forty years and a bond of love that is being passed on and shared by all those who entered her life.

A few steps away, an man in his later sixties, sitting on a large tomb, is retouching the engravings on the marble tomb stone with white paint. He is completely absorbed in his work.  He raised his head as my camera flashed and smiled at me. I took him for a hired hand. "You do this for a living?” I asked. "No”, he said. "This is my mother and son and that one is my uncle,” pointing to another tomb behind him. He has buried in one grave his mother and 31 years after that his own son who died at 28. That was almost twenty years back. His son was engaged to be married. But just five days before the marriage, he died of massive heart attack. So, he opened the grave of his mother and buried her grandson with her. That is beside the grave of his uncle. "This was brought from Bangalore,” he told me showing the green marble slabs on the graves. His eyes were gleaming with pride. "You can’t get this type of marble in Pune,” he said. He has done something special for his departed dear ones so that their graves will stand out on All Saints Day. He has suffered great loss, mother, uncle and a dear son. His dreams of being a father-in-law and a grand father were dashed. However, he seems to have over come all the sorrows, but the bond of love remains beyond the grave though there may be practically no remains beneath those marble slabs. Twenty years is enough for all that is buried to degrade in to soil. However, love and affection are not biodegradable and memories can never be erased.

I was waiting for the body of my colleague’s husband to arrive! He was a army personnel, served the Lord during his days in the army and after his retirement as a full-time pastor. He pastored a congregation of about 300 people. It was an unusual funeral, some of those who were waiting were growing impatient. The church has decided to have a funeral procession something unheard these days in a city like Pune. Usually there are undertakers who do the job. They bring the body to the cemetery in an ambulance, the family members and friends come in their own cars or public transport. No one takes walks to the cemetery with the body these days.

While were waiting two other funerals were also going on. On the catholic side a body was brought and an altar was quickly put up, candles were lighted. I had nothing else to do and I wanted to find out who is in the coffin. It was a man in his fifties. A small crowd of about fifty people has gathered as they waited for the priest to come. The dead man has a "sindhur” on his forehead and was wearing a red-sports cap! The cap was new, I am sure he did not die in that cap! There was an old lady kissing the dead man and crying in Marathi. But the expression on the face of the dead man was quite sportive. If they held the coffin vertical he would look like a soccer umpire who froze to death! Jolly good guy he probably was in life!

On the other side of the cemetery was another coffin, a very small group of around twenty people are gathered there by the grave. They all came in cars. Nobody is crying, they are waiting for the priest to come! All are well-dressed and spoke English. It was not about the dead man or his family or about the funeral arrangements. Most of them are looking towards the irons gates of the cemetery probably for the priest’s car to come; one or two people are passing occasional glances at the coffin. They seem to be eager to get this over and get back to their life. Death means many things to many people.

Our wait was over. A red car with loud-speaker on its top, a keyboardist and a tabla player inside entered through the rusted iron gates. Three or four men in white shirts and black pants with cloth-bags on their shoulders were walking behind the car leading a procession of about 1000 people. They had microphones in their hands and were singing in Hindi. The huge crowd walking behind them joined in the singing. Whenever the young men stopped singing between two songs the crowd shouted "Yesu Masih ki Jay!” a usual phrase praising Jesus. There was another car behind it inching its way forward through the crowd. They stopped it and pulled the coffin of their dear pastor out and carried it on their shoulders to the grave-side. The young men had stopped singing through the microphone but the crowd continued to sing as they walked towards the grave. The young men had grabbed their keyboard and tabla and ran ahead of everyone to the grave-side. They fixed the loudspeaker on a tripod. Assembled the system and put all things together and began singing before the procession reached the grave. They continued singing in Hindi again through the microphone: "I have a land, I have home in Heaven.” Someone prayed through the loudspeaker in English and it was translated in to Hindi. I noticed that they did not pray for the comfort of the family, the wife who is left behind or the children. But their prayer was that those among gathering who haven’t found the hope in Jesus Christ may find it now! That is the purpose of this public funeral. Then there were few more testimonies; they talked about the their pastors life and faith! The first preacher spoke about eternity and how to follow the deceased pastor to the heavenly bliss. I know there will be another speaker may be one more saying the same thing. They are so excited that they got another chance to explain "the hope that is in us.”

I was exhausted, dehydrated from the long wait in the hot-sun. The pollen from the weeds thriving in the graveyard was irritating my eyes. I had to leave. I walked away leaving the crowd who was turning the funeral of their dear pastor to a evangelistic campaign. I walked past the father adorning the marble grave of his son, passing one more glance at the little grave of Yesther shining with the fresh coat of cow-dung. The English speaking funeral party is still waiting for their pastor to come growing impatient. While the friends of the dead man in red cap and sindhur was proceeding to the grave following the priest.

The poor and the rich meet here. Their poverty and wealth is still reflected in appearance of their graves. Some express their love with cow-dung and lime; some with imported marble. Some are passionate and some detach themselves from the dead. They love life and hate death. But there are still a few bury their dead brimming with the joy of life eternal. They will not visit the grave again, never will they clean it up. Their hope is not in the grave but life beyond the grave!

iDeath and eLife: What Steve Jobs Discovered and Missed

Steve Jobs, as Rick Warren rightly tweeted was " the Thomas Edison" of his generation. Steve Jobs changed the way we look at the world just as Edison. Steve Wozniak, Jobs’ friend and colleague from the very beginning of his career remarked in his "tearful” interview with Associated Press that, "We lost something that we will never get back!" Steve Jobs was so unique! Everyone shared that sense of loss but will still remember Steve Jobs for the way he changed the world.


Like thousands of others, Apple computers made my life different. The first work I ever did on a computer was on an old IBM PC way back in 1986-1988 during my student days in Bangalore. It had no hard disk, it used two 5" floppy disk drives. One of the floppy disks had the OS and the word processing program. The other was for saving the documents to. The computer had no memory of any sort, we had to enter the time and date at start up. We did not know what we were going to get. I mean, the screen and the printout did not match exactly. If you forgot to close the code for bold font (which was invisible on the screen) then the entire document from that point will be in bold!


However, two years later, I was introduced to an Apple Macintosh Classic computer with a black and white screen. It had a mouse, what I saw on the screen was I what I got in the printout (WYSWYG). It could type Hebrew and Greek, the two languages that I had to use besides English. It was a great leap for me! Then a few months later, I had my own Apple-- A Macintosh LC with color monitor! Nineteen years now, I still keep it; it is still functional though I don't use it! I  had to part my ways with Apple. I could not travel with Apple any further as my iBook crashed a few years back. I changed my loyalties to Linux run on PCs. Apples turned out to be expensive. Moreover it was difficult to keep pace with the speed at which they updated the hardware and the software-- every six months something new rolled out of Steve Jobs mind to the market. However, I still am an Apple fan and hold no hatred for iPhones or iPads!


The world of technology and business hail him for his inventions; iPhone, iPad, iCloud and all that preceded these. However, I think his greatest achievement was not an invention but a discovery that he made. I would like to call it iDeath!


He disclosed that discovery when he went public after being diagnosed for pancreatic cancer in 2005. That is his discovery of the significance of death for him. He said, "Remembering that I' ll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important." 


However, even before that, from the very beginning of his career he had death in view. Steve Wozniak who knew him from the very beginning of his life as a computer genius and business man made another revelation about Jobs in his interview with the Associated Press. He said that Jobs told him around the time he left Apple in 1985 that he had a feeling he would die before the age of 40. Because of that, "a lot of his life was focused on trying to get things done quickly," Wozniak said.


This discovery of the significance of death for a human being defined Jobs’ life-style and his impatience for achievements. Former colleagues remember him being rude and impatient. He fired people if their answer did not satisfy him. He had no time to waste, he was on a rush. The secret seems to be that he always saw death before him, he had the end in view; he had to achieve all that he could before he reached that point.


I would like to use the metaphor of a ship on collision course to understand Steve Jobs view of life and death. He seems to have imagined that his ship will not survive the collision and will sink deep down never to raise again. Seeing the immanent death (though he lived longer than he thought he will) he was on a hurry. He was bent on achieving as much as he can before the collision happens. That is what made him brash and impatient. That sense of urgency is the secret of his achievements as well.


However, that is not the only perspective on life and death that is possible. Saint Paul saw death every day in his life. He lived a very dangerous life which he described as "we die every day" (1 Cor 15:31). Death was an every day possibility for him. He had survived shipwrecks, snake bites, robbery attempts, had fought with animals in the arena. He knew that he may drop dead any time! Though death was a daily reality for him, his view on death was very different from that of Steve Jobs.


If he saw his life as a ship, he would have seen death as a thick fog through which his ship has to pass through and not as an ice-berg that it would crash on to.While Steve Jobs could not see the other side of death, Saint Paul could see through the fog the other side of life beyond the grave.


The other side of the grave (the fog) as the Bible presents it is beautiful and radically different from one the one that we have now. The Bible describes it as a life where the perishable is turned into imperishable, and the mortal turned in to immortal. It is a life without limit: no limit on its time and no cap on its quality. That limitless length and quality is what qualifies it to be described as "Eternal Life" or eLife borrowing Steve Job’s language! (One of his flops was the eMac!).


This eLife is not a life of passivity; spent waiting for the other life. It has the same urgency that Steve Jobs maintained but for two different reasons. The first reason is that the passing through the fog is to a place from where there is no return. Whatever to be achieved in this world has to be achieved before the ship enters the fog. The second reason is that we can only predict the possibility of the fog but can’t predict how far we are from it. One day our ships will meet the fog, but none knows when. That demands that every moment has to be redeemed. There is urgency that fuels our life to achieve.


Steve Jobs has been a great achiever. His achievement was prompted by the certainty of an immanent death from which he cannot escape. That great discovery of death made him rush and gained a place with the greatest minds of our times. But he could have had the same urgency and achievements that follow from that sense of urgency with another view of life and death as well. He could have held a view which would have given him hope not only in this world but also in the world to come. It seems that he missed that perspective. His greatest achievement is the discovery of iDeath on which he could not put any controls. He missed eLife-- eternal life that Jesus offers to all who put their trust in him. If Steve Jobs had read that Book which talks about it, he would have discovered eLife.

The "AGAPE" Love

The Bible teaches us that love is a fruit of the Spirit and it has supremacy over the gifts of the Spirit. In fact Saint Paul argues that the exercise of the gifts of the Spirit is useless if devoid of love. Being devoid of love is a state of existence which can be very well described as "being nothing” (1 Cor 13:2) and such lives "gain nothing” (1 Cor 13:3).

The love mentioned in this passage is a entirely different type of love, very different from what we usually mean by it. The Greek word AGAPE is consistently used throughout the entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 13, the greatest poem on love.

It was a common word for love which found a new meaning in the New Testament because of the experience of love that the writers had. Their experience was different from those who lived before their era, before Christ came in to this world to put up a magnifcient show of this special love. The translators of the Old Testament into Greek who lived about 200 years before Christ had many Greek words to choose from to translate the word, "love.” So, they chose as they thought fitting for the context of each occurance in the Hebrew bible. The word AGAPE is used for love only 20 times in the entire Old Testament in Greek though the word love comes more 500 than times! However, the New Testament writers use the word AGAPE 116 times (75 times by Paul alone) though the New Testament is only one third the size of the Old Testament! The resaon for this use is their experience of God’s love through his Son, Jesus Christ which the Hellenistic Jews missed.

This love is not a convenient love or a congenial love but a love for the most unlovable. Most of the time we love whom it is convenient to love. Inconvenience hinders such love. Haven’t you seen people break up when one of the lovers change universities or move away from the other. The distance and new circumstances becomes inconveniet for love and love ends there. AGAPE love is is not congenial. Congenial love is the love for the things that we like or for those of the same kind. Crows peck away the alien birds who enter their tree because they cannot love birds of other kind. Their love is congenial. Human beings also have the same mentality. It is easy to love people of our family, our country, of our skin colour and the like. Though, we may not hate people who are different from others, loving them demands effort.

However, the love that God displayed through his son is qualitatively quiet different from this. It is the love for the most unlovable, when they were most unlovable. In Romans 5:8 we see the nature of this love: "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” First of all Christ loved for the sinners whom God really doesn’t like at all. The Bible says, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18). However, God is willing to love us though we donot deserve his love. The New Testament writers reserved this word for that sort of love. Secondly, God loved us with his AGAPE love when we did not deserve us. God’s love for the sinners was not after their conversion to God’s children. He loves them even before that, when they "were still sinners.” Thank God that he did not say, "if you stop sinning I will try to love you.”

John, who is known as the Apostle of Love says that God was so liberal in loving us, his love was unlimited. He uses the word "lavish” to express the manner of God’s love! "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1 NIV). The most unworthy of all are the ones who are loved by this type of love.

Moreover, this love is transformative. It transforms the persons who are loved so that they look at the world and all around them with AGAPE love. This transformative power is expressed in 1 John. "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.” (1 John 3:14 ESV). "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (1 John 3:16 ESV).

The reason for the AGAPE love is not in the object of love, but proceeds from the character of the lover. God is able to love us with the AGAPE love because he is love. We cannot love others with AGAPE love unless we are transformed by this love. That love transforms our world-views, the quality of service, and all that we do and think. That is why this love has the supremacy over all the magnificent gifts of the Spirit and display of spiritual power.

The Centurion and the Galilean: A study in authority

When a Galilean carpenter commands "Go" nobody moves; they may look at him curiously wondering if he is all right. When he beckons to someone to come they may, but not always! Nobody is under his command and he has no authority over anyone.
However, a Roman centurion is different. He has 100 soldiers under his command. When he walks in, they all stand in attention and salute him. When he commands one of them to go and fetch something he does. When he shouts 'march' they march on in an array. All of them are under his command. His words work. They can change things; they make things move!
The Roman centurion whom we find in Luke 7 was in desperate need, a need which was beyond the resources he had at hand. One of his servants was sick and no words of him will heal him. The sickness or whatever that caused that sickness was not under his authority. They won't heed his commands. He was helpless.
However, he was humble. Humility is the pre-requisite for faith. He knew higher authorities exist. He knew from his experience that authorities higher than him had higher commanding power. An officer in-charge of a legion had much higher power than a centurion.
Centurion's knowledge and experience shaped his faith. He did not want Jesus to come to his house. The reason for not taking Jesus to his house is not that it was not big enough for Jesus. The reason was simple; Jesus doesn't need to be there. His word is enough! 'But say the word, and my servant will be healed' (Luke 7:7). The article (the) on "word" is important. He meant "the word" for sickness to leave! He knew there is a word to make the army march, there is a word to make the army to retreat, so there must be a word for sickness to leave and healing to come in. The one who has authority over sickness can command using 'the word that heals.' In Jesus he recognized that authority and the power of Jesus' command.
Centurions' faith was commended because his faith came from his experience and his recognition of Jesus' authority. In Jesus he saw more than a Galilean tramp, a man of authority. In Jesus he saw a man who has authority over all sickness. That's what is called faith!

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Exonerating Jonah

We have been very unkind to Jonah. No character of the Bible has suffered so badly at the hands of Bible interpreters and preachers like this man often pictured in a long robe and a long beard. Sometimes pcitured in the belly of a huge fish! Christians and Jews of all ages are equally guilty of this. They pick up a negative image of this poor prophet from early childhood as the Sunday School teachers use their flannel graphs and tell the children not to be so disobient as this disobedient prophet! And when these children mature to adulthood they become Sunday School teachers and preachers to continue the millennial old negative propaganda against this prophet of Israel.

Jonah was not that bad! He ran away from the presence of the Lord, I agree! Probably, he did not have read Psalm 139 especially verses 7 -10 of that psalm: "Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. (Psalms 139:7-10 ESV).

Not only him, even long after him, the people of Israel thought that the presence of God was limited to certain places. This is what the Samaritan woman quizzed Jesus: "The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” (John 4:19-20). So, he thought he can get rid of this nagging God if he left the country and sailed for a far away place, beyond the reach of the Hebrew God!

Now, running away from his country to avoid the presence of God, that is a serious charge! But tell me which prophet of Israel was not fed up with this God who always demanded too much from them. Moses, complained to God many times when he was under stress, Elijah wanted to die unable to carry on, Jeremiah wept, protested, argued with God, Isaiah was despondent, the list can go on! We all are tempted to do it. It is just human.

Sleeping at the bottom of the ship while a storm was raging and every sailor was praying to his god is quite an achievement! Who can sleep peacefully amidst such a turbulance? Remember what you did when when you are 40,000 ft above the Atlantic and the pilot turned the seat-belt light on with a warning that the plane is facing turbulent weather? You made a sign of the cross and closed your eyes but were not able to sleep until the plane got back to a smooth path? Jonah was not sleeping, I think, was pondering "O God, you are here too! You got me?"

The story portrays an ordinary human being. It tells us what any prophet would do if God asks him to do something that he has never done before. Not just prophets all devout persons have limits to their patience and endurance. Jonah had reached his. That explains his behaviour.

But what I like in the story of Jonah is that he did something that many godly people normally won’t do. First of all, he knew what is wrong! He was a good troubleshooter! He told his fellow sailors that it is the hand of his God who created heaven, earth and sea! Many of us are equally good trouble shooters as well. But the difference is that Jonah not only found out what is wrong but he admitted that he is responsible for it! That many of us don't do. We normally score very low as troubleshooters, but very high as trouble-makers. Even when we succeed in locating the reason for the problem we tend to park it at somebody else's door! Taking up responsibility for the mess we created is often not in our nature. Now, I want Jonah to be exonerated at least on this ground! Long live Jonah!